


will you know me then

by seventhstar



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Canon, Bondage, M/M, Past Lives, Reincarnation, Slavery, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:23:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3749746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/pseuds/seventhstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>rei fell in love with yuuma once, and he carried it with him every time he was reborn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	will you know me then

The sunlight threw sparkles on the surface of the water, and in the depths of Yuuma’s eyes. Rei watched him wade out into the stream, net in hand. His clothes clung wetly to him, and Rei could see the muscles in his arms flex as he snatched up fish after fish. Yuuma kept up a stream of commentary as he worked, pointing out especially good catches and delighting over the cool water on the hot day and promising Rei that after they were done, he’d cook the fish for Rei so they could have a nice dinner. Rei cleaned and gutted the fish as he listened.

Yuuma was kind. Rei had come to this village only a few moons ago, driven by the approaching tide of war, and Yuuma’s family had taken him in. They, too, were refugees from a war-torn part of the country, hiding out here in the valley, where the steep mountain passes kept it safe. It was like paradise for Rei, who had always been alone, and though Yuuma often spoke of going home, of seeing his friends again, Rei would have been happy to have this one summer extend on forever. He hoped that Yuuma’s friends would die in the war, or move somewhere else, or despise him; there was a niggling sense of guilt at these thoughts that Yuuma would never approve of, but Rei couldn’t help himself. There had never been a Yuuma in his life before. He had no desire to share that kindness, to have it diluted among everyone if there was a chance of having it purely for his own.

When the fish were all cleaned and Yuuma was dry, they walked back to the village together. Rei watched Yuuma’s hand swing as he walked; it looked warm, and he toyed with the idea of reaching out and grabbing it, of taking him deep into the woods so they would still be alone. He wanted to press Yuuma into the grass, hide him away in the shadows of the trees. Rei wanted to pin him down and kiss him him until neither of them could breathe.

It was Yuuma’s fault, wasn’t it? Rei tried to read him as he helped Yuuma’s aunt build the fire while Yuuma prepared the fish. The smell of them cooking filled the air, and his mouth watered. He had scavenged for whatever he could find until Yuuma had found him, had slept on rocks in the dirt until Yuuma gave him a bed. Yuuma was so nice, so sweet, that Rei couldn’t be sure that he was really loved by him in the way he wanted. Maybe Yuuma held the hands of his other friends, or kissed them late at night, or pressed his body against them beneath the sheets. The thought made him a little ill.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Yuuma asked. He offered Rei a crude wooden bowl of fish stew. Rei accepted it and tasted it; whether it was Yuuma’s smile or Yuuma’s cooking that warmed him, he didn’t know.

“Yuuma.” Rei looked down into the bowl. “Let’s go for a walk later.”

“Tonight?” Yuuma frowned up at the moonless sky. “It’s so dark…”

“Just for a little while?”

“I guess we can.” Yuuma shrugged and dug back into his stew, and Rei glared at the ground. Yuuma, he thought, could stand to be a little more sensitive.

The meal over, the bowls washed, Yuuma went into the house to fetch his cloak while Rei stared up at the stars. They were dimmer tonight, the sky dotted with passing clouds. It was good; he could get close to Yuuma, very close, without him realizing. Yuuma emerged from the house, body draped in rough brown fabric, and Rei smiled at him.

“Let’s go.” He led him towards the village edge, towards the woods.

It was pitch-black beneath the canopy of branches, and the sound of the twigs they crunched underfoot were impossibly loud. Rei dared to take Yuuma’s hand once the village was out of sight, once they were truly alone; it was calloused from work, the skin warm. Yuuma didn’t pull away; his fingers intertwined with Rei’s.

“Where are we going?”

“Shhh,” Rei whispered. He drew Yuuma deeper into the forest, until they came out into a clearing.

It was small, but the grass felt soft and the branches parted above their heads to reveal the night sky above. It would serve his purposes well enough.

He tugged Yuuma down, until they were both on their knees in the grass. Rei gripped Yuuma’s arms tightly, keeping him close, arranging him so that his back was to a tree.

“Rei?”

“Yuuma,” Rei breathed. His name tasted sweet on his tongue.

How much sweeter would Yuuma’s mouth be, pressed against his own?

“Be mine,” he murmured, moving close so that he could feel Yuuma exhale sharply, and then he shoved him back against the tree.

Yuuma started to cry out, but Rei muffled him with a kiss, and snatched handfuls of his cloak in ecstasy. Yuuma yielded to him, lips parted, his hands coming up to rest on Rei’s back gently.

He was disappointed when Yuuma finally broke away. “R-rei.”

Rei pushed against him, so that his hips rested atop Yuuma’s hips. “Don’t you want me?”

It was dark, but Rei touched Yuuma’s face and could feel the heat of his blush.

“Can I think about it?”

Rei’s mouth twisted into a scowl. Yuuma squirmed beneath him, trying to get up, and he shifted his weight so that he couldn’t.

“Why do you have to think about it, Yuuma?” He demanded. “Don’t you like me?”

“Of course I like you, Rei,” Yuuma said. He squeezed Rei’s shoulder reassuringly. “But we only just met…I mean…”

“Yuuma,” Rei began. He felt the three words rush up in his throat and swallowed them; he wasn’t going to say it first, not if Yuuma needed time. He had no desire to be rejected any more than he already had been.

“Rei, I—”

An arrow blurred past his nose and pierced Yuuma’s chest.

He slumped back against the bark, blood bubbling from the wound. Rei froze, and no other arrows came, and the silence Yuuma’s breath, Yuuma’s voice had filled rang in his ears. He put a hand on Yuuma’s chest; the blood was hot and sticky between his fingers.

He stayed there until the blood was ice cold, until the archer returned and put him out of his misery.

+++++++

It came back to him in pieces, in drops of blood on on his hands and leaves that were buffeted in the wind, in fish stews that made nostalgia quicken his blood. He would remember, then, that once he had had another name (he had had many names so far) and that there had been another name on his lips, another heart he coveted.

His memory of Yuuma ripped him open and left him empty every time.

Vector lounged on the throne, feeling a familiar itch beneath his skin. Sometimes Yuuma was killed, and sometimes he betrayed Vector and ran away, and sometimes he dared to love someone else, but they were never together, no matter how many times Vector awoke in a new body and a new life. Perhaps it was because Yuuma never remembered him.

“How cruel, Yuuma,” Vector hissed. There was blood on his hands, he didn’t know whose, and it reminded him of the arrow that had cut Yuuma’s last utterance short. “I’ve given you plenty of time to think, and even so…”

But he was king now. Surely Yuuma would not be so difficult this time…

+++++++

“Vector-sama….Vector-sama!”

Yuuma buried his face in the sheets to muffle himself, but Vector yanked sharply on his hair to make him lift his head. Yuuma did what he wanted; if screaming would pacify the king, then it was all Yuuma could do.

Vector fucked him viciously, growling obscenities into his ear as he left bruised in Yuuma’s shoulders, as Yuuma clung to the bed and closed his teary eyes. It wasn’t unbearably painful — Vector was very careful about the way he damaged him so he usually made the effort to prepare him — but it wasn’t enjoyable, either. Sometimes that was fine, but sometimes Vector would see his discomfort and get even more angry, as if Yuuma was deliberately refusing to get any pleasure out if it.

“Yuuma,” he whispered, and that was all the warning Yuuma had before vector finished inside him. It was sticky, and hot, and Yuuma wanted to hide his flushed face in the sheet again, but he knew it wouldn’t be tolerated.

Instead he clenched his teeth together and waited, as Vector pulled out and loosened his grip on Yuuma’s hair. He left to clean himself up, and Yuuma pulled himself up onto the bed. He curled up on his side; Vector’s meeting with his advisers must have gone badly, which meant that Yuuma might be punished. Or maybe it was nothing at all, and Vector was just angry with him. Vector hated him, always accused him or planning to run away or of betraying him, even though Yuuma would never have dreamed of doing either.

It was pointless, after all. Vector would find him, and maybe he would hurt someone else in the process. It was easier to give in.

Footsteps echoed on the stone floor, and Yuuma looked up. It was Vector, carrying a heavy iron collar with a short length of chain hanging from it. It was all Yuuma could do to not cringe at the sight of it., but he sat up and sat still while Vector locked it around his neck and tugged roughly on the chain. The collar was painful to wear, and Vector liked to jerk on the chain to get his attention. He waited; Vector usually only made him wear the collar when he was going to punish him in some way.

But to his surprise, Vector dropped the chain.

“I brought you something,” he said. Yuuma blinked at him.

“Y-you did?”

Vector smirked at him. Then he produced a delicate pearl bracelet and dangled it in front of Yuuma’s face. “For your good behavior.”

Yuuma opened his mouth, sure that he was meant to say something, but he was too shocked to get the words out. Vector had never, in the months or weeks or years Yuuma had been held captive, brought him anything to reward him.

The corner of Vector’s mouth turned down in warning.

“Thank you,” Yuuma said hastily. That was the right thing to say, because Vector gently picked up one of Yuuma’s hands and fastened the bracelet around his wrist. It was beautiful, he thought. Too beautiful for a slave dressed in rags — but then Vector was king. Perhaps he wanted Yuuma to look the part of a royal slave.

Vector didn’t let go of his hand, even after the bracelet was on, for a long time.

++++++

The sound of sobbing woke him, and at first Yuuma thought it was his own. The nightmares overtook him, sometimes, and he would jerk awake trembling and crying, his fist jammed into his mouth to keep himself silent.

But his eyes were dry. The crying was Vector’s.

Yuuma sat up from his place on the floor, curled up on the hearth in front of the flickering embers that looked like glowing eyes in the dark, and stared at the bed.

Vector was mirroring him, body curled up on his side, fists clenched. There were tears leaking from his eyes and sobs wracking his body. It was a far cry from the way Vector normally looked — arrogant and powerful — and it tugged at Yuuma’s heart. It was true Vector was cruel, true that Vector was his captor, but it was hard to not be moved by his suffering.

Yuuma wondered what would happen if he woke him — would Vector be angry that Yuuma had seen him vulnerable? But could he just leave Vector to cry?

Slowly, he got to his feet. Yuuma crept towards the bed, and laid a hand on Vector’s arm.

Vector reacted instantly — Yuuma barely had time to blink before he was pinned against the bed, Vector’s weight against him — and grabbed Yuuma by the throat.

“Wait,” he gasped.

“What were you doing, Yuuma?” Vector snarled.

“You were crying,” Yuuma said. He tried desperately to take a full breath. “I just…you were crying…”

Vector’s grip tightened. Yuuma closed his eyes.

And then he let go. The pressure around his throat slackened; Yuuma breathed deeply as Vector stared down at him with bloodshot eyes. Vector touched his face, tracing down his cheek to his jaw, and then he shifted his weight so that Yuuma could sit up.

Yuuma moved to get off the bed, and return to his place on the floor, but Vector seized his wrist, the wrist with the pearl bracelet around it, and dragged him back until they were pressed together. Yuuma froze; this, too, had never happened before.

“What’s wrong, Yuuma?” Vector laughed. It was mocking, but it was better than him crying, and in a way it relieved Yuuma. “Weren’t you going to comfort me?”

He embraced Vector tentatively; strong arms encircled him. Yuuma closed his eyes, and wondered if he would sleep.

He did.

+++++++++

“Your highness.” The doctor bowed deeply. “Your…your servant?”

Vector didn’t say anything; he let the silence weigh down on the doctor until the words were crushed out of him.

“It is the poison of the white mushroom, your highness.” The doctor said shakily. “It is fatal. He has only days to live.”

“Impossible.”

“The signs are distinct, your highness. The cold skin, the exhaustion…it’s a painless death, King Vector, he’ll just fall asleep and —”

“A painless death?” Vector asked.

“Yes, your highness.”

Vector rose from his throne. “Have this filth executed,” he said, and the doctor’s pleading faded away behind him as he made his way back to his chambers. Yuuma couldn’t die; not after Vector had expended so much effort in making him love him. Things had been going so well; after Vector had started giving him little rewards for good behavior, he’d found Yuuma much more pliant. He’d even started to enjoy Vector’s touch.

He was sitting by the fire when Vector stormed into the room, and Yuuma scrambled to his feet and bowed to him.

“Vector-sama,” he gasped. He looked too pale, too shaky on his feet, and Vector wished briefly that he had interrogated the doctor before killing him. He touched Yuuma’s skin; it was icy, like he were already dead.

So even when Yuuma submitted to him, others would try and steal him from him. Later, Vector thought darkly, he would find the one who had dared to poison what belonged to the king, and make him suffer.

Later.

+++++++

Vector’s touch was feather-light today, and pleasure washed over Yuuma like a wave, starting between his legs where Vector’s hand was and suffusing his entire body, making his blood sing. He wondered dimly what he had done, that Vector was so pleased with him, but he couldn’t linger on it. He felt too good.

He was blindfolded, and dressed in a ruffled white tunic and draped with pearls; it was almost as if he were really Vector’s lover, not his slave. Everything was soft, Vector’s finger and Vector’s voice and the bed beneath him and the fabric that covered his body and the ribbon that was wound over his eyes. He tried to keep silent, but little whimpers escaped him;Vector must have liked them somehow, because he wasn’t silenced.

“Yuuma,” Vector said, his voice so low Yuuma was not at all sure he wasn’t imagining it.

He tried to say Vector’s name in return, but something was tensing low in his belly, pleasure building up until he climaxed with a wordless cry. Yuuma lay there, drained, as a wet cloth was dabbed between his thighs. He was so loose, so boneless, that he felt he might sink into the bed and never return.

The bed shifted beside him, and then he was in Vector’s arms.

“This is your fault,” he whispered into Yuuma’s ear. “If you had just said yes, the arrow wouldn’t have hit you.”

Yuuma didn’t understand. And suddenly, he felt very tired. The evening had been full of little miracles — Vector lavishing him with attention, with presents, with affection — and he felt that he would dream sweet dreams, if he let himself fall asleep. And Vector was warm, beside him.

He felt the blindfold come undone, but he didn’t open his eyes. Yuuma tried to concentrate on the sound of Vector’s breathing, but it was getting fainter and fainter…

+++++++

“They say he’s mad,” The guard whispered as he glanced over his shoulder. The king was known to appear at the worst possible times. The priest beside him, robes streaked with ash, shook his head.

“What poor soul did he burn?”

“His little slave,” The guard said. “He carried the body down and set it afire, right here in the courtyard. He watched it burn all the way to nothing.”

The priest looked sickened at he eyed his dirtied robes. “He killed his slave?”

“Who knows?” The guard shuddered. “He called all the lords of the court to the throne room. Maybe he’s going to burn them, too.”

From the direction of the throne room, they heard a gong ring. The guard put a hand on his sword as his mouth fell open.

“Is that…?” The priest asked. He wiped his ashy hands furiously on his robe.

“The gong of battle.” The guard finished. He gripped the hilt of his blade tightly. “We’re going to war.”

++++++++

I will find you again, _Vector thought as he hefted the axe; it was hard, to find a way to swing it that would lead to his own demise. He fixed Yuuma’s face in his mind. He wouldn’t forget._

Blood sprayed as his body fell.

An insignia in the shape of an eye burned itself ominously into his forehead.

Vector despised humans and their emotions.

He could watch them, from the Barian World, and he saw them destroy themselves over foolishness, break themselves over bonds, bleed themselves for love and trust. How pathetic, he thought. There was something pure about being a Barian. He was like a star, full of compressed power and light, far beyond anything a human could ever be.

Vector only watched the humans in case they would be useful to him. He observed them for his amusement. He felt nothing for them.

(Sometimes he caught himself scanning the herds of humans for a face he did not know. It disgusted him.)

The human flesh he inhabited on Earth was weak and soft, and It did things to him. Vector resisted it, no matter how long he was forced to spend in the meat sack to uphold the charade of Rei Shingetsu (where had he found that name?). The human form wanted things, things that only a human could find desirable — loathsome joinings of flesh, squishy contact — and it wanted them fiercely.

(Yuuma’s skin looked soft, his hands warm.)

Vector felt nothing for Yuuma Tsukumo but hate. No, the hate was for Astral; Yuuma was a means to an end, a tool to break the Astral Messenger and take the Numbers for himself. He was just a stupid boy.

And if Vector wanted to tear Yuuma to pieces, shred his body and wreck his spirit, make him scream and squirm with fear, that was only natural. That was the what humans deserved. It wasn’t personal.

(Rei Shingetsu’s’ heart fluttered sometimes. Vector wanted to reach into his chest and rip it out and stomp on it.)

+++++++

Dead. He was dead.

The phantom pain of the axe-wound lingered, and there were other things too, sensations and voices and visions that Vector rejected and refused to remember. That one touch of humanity, of despair and hate that led him to destroy himself, was already more than he could bear. To have fallen so low as to kill himself was bad enough.

Besides there was nothing of worth in those old memories. Vector believed it, and Don Thousand encouraged him to forget, sometimes painfully. He had no need for the battles, for the bloodshed, for his suffering.

(But there were white ruffles and silk ribbons and pearls.)

Vector hunted the Numbers with Don Thousand’s power. It was what he wanted, wasn’t it? To destroy Nasch and Merag. To rule the Barian World. To defeat Astral, who had defeated him before. There was nothing else.

There had never been anything else.

(But he could not go after Yuuma himself; there was ice inside him, freezing up his bloodthirst.)

He watched them fall, humans and Barians alike, and it satisfied him. He would win, and when the time came he would deal with Don Thousand, too. There was nothing weak and human in him, not anymore.

(Then why did it feel like something was missing?)

++++++++

Yuuma had looked at him like this once before, when he arrived in that village in the heart of paradise, exhausted and alone. His eyes were sad then. He had thought Vector dead.

_Rei,_ Vector thought. _That was the name I wanted on your lips._

He was burning out, collapsing into nothing, and here Yuuma was. Now, at last, Yuuma had come to him.

Everything else was leaving him, but Yuuma’s face remained. Vector strained to keep his eyes on it, even as the last of Don Thousand’s power bled out of him and his body began to crumble.

_I want to keep looking at you,_ he thought. _I want to remember…_

Yuuma was crying. His lips moved, and the sound couldn’t reach Vector’s ears. He might have said anything, said ‘Rei’ or ‘No’ or ‘Goodbye’. Vector did not know.

Perhaps it was not over, after all. Perhaps the next time they met, he would ask.


End file.
